Mikael Laakso

I am an Associate Professor at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki Finland. I have been researching the changing landscape towards openness in scholarly publishing by studying combinations of bibliometrics, web metrics, business models, science policy, and author behavior for over 10 years. I defended my PhD thesis on the subject of Open Access journal publishing in 2014.

In addition to teaching, supervision, and research I see societal impact as very important part of my work, thus I frequently give public talks and am involved in various national and international groups. I recently served as a member of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 expert group on Future of Scholarly Publishing and scholarly Communication which published its final report in February 2019. In recent years I have also been involved in preparing reports for the Harvard Library Office of Scholarly Communication, The Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland, and the Association of Scholarly Publishers in Finland.

Regarding my current societal engagements I am a member of the strategy group coordinating open science development in Finland. Related to this work I am also chairing a working group looking into financial aspects of international journal publishing in the context of Finland. Further I am a member of the strategy group for negotiations with journal publishers on behalf of the Finnish university library consortium (FinElib). I am a member of the advisory board for intellectual property , appointed by the Ministry of Education and Culture. I am a panel member of the Finnish Publication Forum , which is a rating and classification system supporting the assessment of research outputs on a large scale. I am also deputy member of the steering group of the National Library of Finland.

At Hanken School of Economics I am currently member of the board for Research and University Services, the Department Council, the Research Ethics Committee, and the Examination Board (deputy).

I am the editor-in-chief of the journal Informaatiotutkimus, and a member of the editorial boards of the journal Publications and Helsinki University Press. I am on the advisory board of the blog Elephant in the Lab.